Airport Choice Analysis of International Passengers Using Time-Series Disaggregate Data

Recently, large-scale hub airports have been developed at principal cities in Asia. Consequently, many direct air routes for Asian cities have been established from local airports in Japan. By December 2001, for instance, 22 airports in Japan offered direct flights to South Korea. These changes in air route settings seem to influence not only airport choice but also destination choice of Japanese passengers. This research investigates the airport and destination choices of Japanese passengers using repeated cross-section disaggregate air passenger data. Disaggregate nested logit models are employed to represent passenger's airport and destination choices. At the same time, a forecasting model of overseas travel generation demand is also estimated that uses a generalized least squares method. These models are used to evaluate the policies of increasing international flights at local airports in Japan.